334 THE MASTERS OF THE SCHOOLS AT July inference from what John says ^ that they also taught at Chartres. We have seen that there was a Master G., probably the same with dominus Guillelmus, dwelling in that city about twenty years earlier ; ^ and though it is noticeable that neither William nor Richard appears among the witnesses to documents at Chartres as holding any office in its church, there are grounds for associating them more naturally with that place than with Paris. John of Salisbury indeed speaks expressly of their C8,rrying on the tradition of sound grammatical teaching laid down by Bernard of Chartres.^ Moreover, William was a Norman, born at Conches near Evreux,* some forty miles from Chartres and seventy from Paris. He dedicated his Dragmaticon to Geoffrey Plantagenet as duke of Normandy, therefore not earlier than 1144 ; and he lets us see that he was then acting as tutor to his sons, Henry and GeofiErey. Now Henry was living at Bristol as the pupil of a certain Master Matthew ^ from 1142 to the end of 11 46, when he went back to Normandy and stayed there until the spring of 1149.* William of Conches, therefore, must have been his tutor some time in the years 1147-9. In the same book he says that even then he did not fully understand matters which he had taught ' per viginti annos et eo amplius '. This takes us back to the time when Bernard was chancellor of Chartres, before November 1126. But William is here speaking of an advanced subject, ' de substantiis physicis ' ; and his statement is compatible with his having been a teacher of more elementary things many years earlier. In 1138 John of Salisbury still looked upon him as in the first place the Grammarian of Conches. It would seem likely that William remained in that city, after Bernard retired or died, and that it was there that John attended his instruction from about 1138 to 1140. He is not mentioned among the Paris masters in the Metamorphosis Goliae, to which we shall immediately turn. Now Chartres was subject to the count of Blois, whose brother became king of England, and it may be conjectured that when Geoffrey Plantagenet acquired the duchy of Normandy William quitted Chartres and returned to his native country, where his reputation as a scholar gave him employment in the duke's household. Of Richard I'Eveque's > See above, p. 322. » See above, pp. 325, 326.
- Metalog. i. 24, p. 60. This corrects the assertion in the Hist. lilt, de la France,
xii. 455, that there is no proof that William studied under Bernard. Haur^u also denies any connexion between William and the church of Chartres {Mim. de VAead. des Inscr. xxxi. ii. 101).
- The statement in the Hist. lilt, de la France, xii. 455, which is repeated by Clerval,
Les Scoles de Chartres, p. 181, that William was bom in 1080 is an improbable conjecture. The date should probably be placed at least ten years later. » Gervase of Canterbury, i. 125.
- See Round, Qeaffrey de JUandeville, pp. 405-8, 1892 ; Haskins, Norman Institu-
tions, pp. 128 fit., 1918.
